California PUC nominee hopes to take heat off PG&E's state regulators

Updated 7:02 pm, Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Gov. Jerry Brown's newest nominee for the state Public Utilities Commission promised Wednesday to make the regulatory agency so safety conscious in the aftermath of the San Bruno pipeline disaster that the public will "quit thinking about us again."

Michael Picker has been serving on the commission for six months pending state Senate approval of his nomination. On Wednesday, he won unanimous recommendation from the Senate Rules Committee, but not before the panel's chairman, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, questioned him about whether commission officials were too close to one of the utilities they regulate, Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Steinberg, D-Sacramento, cited e-mails exchanged by commission officials and PG&E executives, including one in which commission President Michael Peevey critiqued the company's public relations strategy and another in which Peevey's chief of staff advised PG&E on how it could avoid responding to a public information request.

A PG&E official replied to the staffer, "Love you."

Steinberg said such exchanges lead people to conclude that the utilities commission's oversight of PG&E has been lax, even after systemic problems with the company's natural-gas system were exposed by the September 2010 pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people. "I hope you prioritize that," he told Picker.

Picker declined to say whether the commission's oversight of PG&E has been sufficiently vigilant, saying he is too new to the panel to judge the situation.

Besides, he said, he has withheld judgment on PG&E's actions in connection with the San Bruno disaster because he will eventually have to rule on whether the company should be fined. He said the disaster is in the past and that he's focused on making "things better in future."

Picker, 62, said he had distributed flyers in front of the commission's San Francisco headquarters, telling employees to feel comfortable bringing safety concerns directly to him.

His goal, he said, is that the agency is "seen doing a better job" so the public will "quit thinking about us again."